Sports Medicine

Sunday was a big sports day. I had a 10-mile race to run in the morning, and the Patriots were playing in the Super Bowl that night. My Wife wasn't running in the race and she doesn't particularly care about football. Still, she gave her whole day to me.

She drove me to the race, dealt with parking, and made it to the starting line to wish me luck. An hour and twenty minutes later, as I hobbled across the finish, she stood cheering and yelling for me. She waited while I cooled down after the race and ate the goodies they had placed out for the runners. Then, she drove me home, listening patiently while I droned on about race details that exactly nobody would find interesting.

That night, she cooked an incredible barbeque pork dinner for the Big Game and sat and watched with me through the first half. She went upstairs for the second half, definitely making the right decision to leave me alone as the Patriots eventually lost in the closing minutes of the game. She was consoling and gentle as I came to bed and kept checking in with me the next day to make sure I was doing okay.

Now, the notion that a grown man would get bent out of shape about a football game is pathetic, I agree. However, My Wife knows that such things do matter to me. All season long she had made every concession so that I could plant myself on the couch (or, more often, pace up and down the living room) during every game. While I love to rant about how T.V. dictates too much of our lives, she never pointed out the obvious irony of my game-day devotion. And, when this season came to an incedibly disappointing end--even I was surprised by how hard it was to take--My Wife has been by my side to let me vent, and rant, and wax philosophic about something that, even I must admit, does not deserve this much emotional energy.

And she never complains. Boy, I can't wait until next season...